The dialect spoken by Appalachian people has been given a
variety of names, the majority of them somewhat less than
complimentary. Educated people who look with disfavor on this
particular form of speech are perfectly honest in their belief that
something called The English Language, which they conceive of as a
completed work - unchanging and fixed for all time - has been taken
and, through ignorance, shamefully distorted by the mountain
folk.

The fact is that this is completely untrue. The folk speech of
Appalachia instead of being called corrupt ought to be classified
as archaic. Many of the expressions heard throughout the region
today can be found in the centuries-old works of some of the
greatest English authors: Alfred, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the men
who contributed to the King James version of the Bible, to cite but
a few.

Most editors who work with older materials have long assumed the
role of officious busy bodies: never so happy, apparently, as when
engaged in tidying up spelling, modernizing grammar, and generally
rendering whatever was written by various Britons in ages past into
a colorless conformity with today's Standard English.

To this single characteristic of the editorial mind must be
ascribed the almost total lack of knowledge on the part of most
Americans that the language they speak was ever any different than
it is right now. How many people know, for example, that when the
poet Gray composed his famous "Elegy" his title for it was "An
Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard?"

Southern mountain dialect (as the folk speech of Appalachia is
called by linguists) is certainly archaic, but the general
historical period it represents can be narrowed down to the days of
the first Queen Elizabeth, and can be further particularized by
saying that what is heard today is actually a sort of
Scottish-flavored Elizabethan English. This is not to say that
Chaucerian forms will not be heard in everyday use, and even an
occasional Anglo-Saxon one as well.

When we remember that the first white settlers in what is today
Appalachia were the so-called Scotch-Irish along with some Palatine
Germans, there is small wonder that the language has a Scottish
tinge; the remarkable thing is that the Germans seem to have
influenced it so little. About the only locally used dialect word
that can be ascribed to them is briggity. The Scots appear
to have had it all their own way.

When I first came to Lincoln County as a bride it used to seem
to me that everything that did not pooch out, hooved up.
Pooch is a Scottish variant of the word pouch and was
in use in the 1600's. Numerous objects can pooch out including
pregnant women and gentlemen with "bay windows." Hoove is a
very old past participle of the verb to heave and was
apparently in use on both sides of the border by 1601. The top of
an old-fashioned trunk may be said to hoove up. Another word heard
occasionally in the back country is ingerns. Ingems
are onions. In Scottish dialect the word is inguns;
however, if our people are permitted the intrusive r in
potaters, tomaters, tobaccer, and so on, there
seems to be no reason why they should not use it in ingems as
well.

It is possible to compile a very long list of these Scots words
and phrases. I will give only a few more illustrations, and will
wait to mention some points on Scottish pronunciation and grammar a
little further on.

Fornenst is a word that has many variants. It can mean
either "next to" or "opposite from." "Look at that big rattler
quiled up fornenst the fence post!"

(Quiled is an Elizabethan pronunciation of
coiled.) "When I woke up this morning there was a little
skift of snow on the ground." "I was getting better, but now
I've took a backset with this flu." "He dropped the dish and
busted it all to flinders." "Law, I hope how soon we
get some rain!" (How soon is supposed to be obsolete, but it
enjoys excellent health in Lincoln County.) "That trifling old
fixin ain't worth a haet!" Haet means the
smallest thing that can be conceived of, and comes from Deil
hae't (Devil have it.) Fixin is the Old English or
Anglo-Saxon word for she-fox as used in the northern
dialect. In the south of England you would have heard vixen,
the word used today in Standard English.

It is interesting to note that it has been primarily the
linguistic historians who have pointed out the predominately
Scottish heritage of the Southern mountain people. Perhaps I may be
allowed to digress for a moment to trace these people back to their
beginnings.

Early in his English reign, James I decided to try to control
the Irish by putting a Protestant population into Ireland. To do
this he confiscated the lands of the earls of Ulster and bestowed
them upon Scottish and English lords on the condition that they
settle the territory with tenants from Scotland and England. This
was known as the "Great Settlement" or the "King's Plantation," and
was begun in 1610.

Most of the Scots who moved into Ulster came from the
lowlands1 and thus they would have spoken the Scots
variety of the Northumbrian or Northern English dialect. (Most
highland Scots at that time still spoke Gaelic.) This particular
dialect would have been kept intact if the Scots had had no
dealings with the Irish, and this, according to records, was the
case.

While in Ulster the Scots multiplied, but after roughly 100
years they became dissatisfied with the trade and religious
restrictions imposed by England, and numbers of them began
emigrating to the English colonies in America.

Many of these Scots who now called themselves the "Scotch-Irish"
came into Pennsylvania where, finding the better lands already
settled by the English, they began to move south and west. "Their
enterprise and pioneering spirit made them the most important
element in the vigorous frontiersmen who opened up this part of the
South and later other territories farther west into which they
pushed."2

Besides the Scots who arrived from Ireland, more came directly
from Scotland to America, particularly after "the '45", the final
Jacobite uprising in support of "Bonnie Prince Charlie," the Young
Pretender, which ended disastrously for the Scottish clans that
supported him. By the time of the American Revolution there were
about 50,000 Scots in this country.

But to get back to the dialect, let me quote two more linguistic
authorities to prove my point about the Scottish influence on the
local speech. Raven I. McDavid notes, "The speech of the hill
people is quite different from both dialects of the Southern
lowlands for it is basically derived from the Scotch-Irish of
Western Pennsylvania."3 H. L. Mencken said of
Appalachian folk speech, "The persons who speak it undiluted are
often called by the Southern publicists, 'the purest Anglo-Saxons
in the United States,' but less romantic ethnologists describe them
as predominately Celtic in blood; though there has been a large
infiltration of English and even German strains."4

The reason our people still speak as they do is that when these
early Scots and English and Germans (and some Irish and Welsh too)
came into the Appalachian area and settled, they virtually isolated
themselves from the mainstream of American life for generations to
come because of the hills and mountains, and so they kept the old
speech forms that have long since fallen out of fashion
elsewhere.

Things in our area are not always what they seem, linguistically
speaking. Someone may tell you that "Cindy ain't got sense enough
to come in outen the rain, but she sure is clever." Clever,
you see, back in the 1600's meant "neighborly or accommodating."
Also if you ask someone how he is, and he replies that he is "very
well", you are not necessarily to rejoice with him on the state of
his health. Our people are accustomed to use a speech so vividly
colorful and virile that his "very well" only means that he is
feeling "so-so." If you are informed that "several" people came to
a meeting, your informant does not mean what you do by
several - he is using it in its older sense of anywhere from
about 20 to 100 people. If you hear a person or an animal referred
to as ill, that person or animal is not sick but
bad-tempered, and this adjective has been so used since the 1300's.
(Incidentally, good English used sick to refer to bad health
long, long before our forebearers ever started saying ill
for the same connotation.)

Many of our people refer to sour milk as blinked milk.
This usage goes back at least to the early 1600's when people still
believed in witches and the power of the evil eye. One of the
meanings of the word blink back in those days was "to glance
at;" if you glanced at something, you blinked at it, and
thus sour milk came to be called blinked due to the evil
machinations of the witch. There is another phrase that occurs from
time to time, "Man, did he ever feather into him!" This used
to carry a fairly murderous connotation, having gotten its start
back in the days when the English long bow was the ultimate word in
destructive power. Back then if you drew your bow with sufficient
strength to cause your arrow to penetrate your enemy up to the
feathers on its shaft, you had feathered into him. Nowadays, the
expression has weakened in meaning until it merely indicates a bit
of fisticuffs.

One of the most baffling expressions our people use (baffling to
"furriners," at least) is "I don't care to. . . ." To outlanders
this seems to mean a definite "no," whereas in truth it actually
means, "thank you so much, I'd love to." One is forevermore hearing
a tale of mutual bewilderment in which a gentleman driving an
out-of-state car sees a young fellow standing alongside the road,
thumbing. When the gentleman stops and asks if he wants a lift, the
boy very properly replies, "I don't keer to," using
care in the Elizabethan sense of the word. On hearing this,
the man drives off considerably puzzled leaving an equally baffled
young man behind. (Even the word foreigner itself is used
here in its Elizabethan sense of someone who is the same
nationality as the speaker, but not from the speaker's immediate
home area.

Reverend is generally used to address preachers, but it
is a pretty versatile word, and full-strength whisky, or even the
full-strength scent of skunk, are also called reverend. In
these latter instances, its meaning has nothing to do with
reverence, but with the fact that their strength is as the strength
of ten because they are undiluted.

In the dialect, the word allow more often means "think,
say, or suppose" than "permit." "He 'lowed he'd git it done
tomorrow."

A neighbor may take you into her confidence and announce that
she has heard that the preacher's daughter should have been
running after the mailman. These are deep waters to the
uninitiated. What she really means is that she has heard a juicy
bit of gossip: the preacher's daughter is chasing the local mail
carrier. However, she takes the precaution of using the phrase
should have been to show that this statement is not vouched
for by the speaker. The same phrase is used in the same way in the
Paston Letters in the 1400's.

Almost all the so-called "bad English" used by natives of
Appalachia was once employed by the highest ranking nobles of the
realms of England and Scotland.

Few humans are really passionately interested in grammar so I'll
skim as lightly over this section as possible, but let's consider
the following bit of dialogue briefly: "I've been a-studying about
how to say this, till I've nigh wearried myself to death. I reckon
hit don't never do nobody no good to beat about the bush, so I'll
just tell ye. Your man's hippoed. There's nothing ails him, but he
spends more time using around the doctor's office than he does
a-working."

The only criticism that even a linguistic purist might offer
here is that, in the eighteenth century, hippoed was
considered by some, Jonathan Swift among others, to be slangy even
though it was used by the English society of the day. (To say
someone is hippoed is to say he is a hypochondriac.)

Words like a-studying and a-working are verbal
nouns and go back to Anglo-Saxon times; and from the 1300's on,
people who studied about something, deliberated or reflected
on it. Nigh is the old word for near, and
weary was the pronunciation of worry in the 1300's
and 1400's. The Scots also used this pronunciation. Reckon
was current in Tudor England in the sense of consider or
suppose. Hit is the Old English third person singular
neuter pronoun for it and has come ringing down through the
centuries for over a thousand years. All those multiple negatives
were perfectly proper until some English mathematician in the
eighteenth century decided that two negatives make a positive
instead of simply intensifying the negative quality of some
statement. Shakespeare loved to use them. Ye was once used
accusatively, and man has been employed since early times to
mean husband. And finally, to use means to frequent
or loiter.

Certain grammatical forms occurring in the dialect have caused
it to be regarded with pious horror by school marms. Prominent
among the offenders, they would be almost sure to list these:
"Bring them books over here." In the 1500's this was good
English. "I found three bird's nestes on the way to school."
This disyllabic ending for the plural goes back to the Middle Ages.
"That pencil's not mine, it her'n." Possessive forms like
his'n, our'n, your'n evolved in the Middle
Ages on the model of mine and thine. In the revision
of the Wycliffe Bible, which appeared shortly after 1380, we find
phrases such as ". . .restore to hir alle things that ben
hern," and "some of ourn went in to the grave."
"He don't scare me none." In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries do was used with he, she, and
it. Don't is simply do not, of course. "You
wasn't scared, was you?" During the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries many people were careful to distinguish
between singular you was and plural you were. It
became unfashionable in the early nineteenth century although Noah
Webster stoutly defended it. "My brother come in from the
army last night." This usage goes back to late Anglo-Saxon times.
You find it in the Paston Letters and in Scottish poetry. "I
done finished my lessons," also has many echoes in the
Pastons' correspondence and the Scots poets. From the late Middle
Ages on up the Northern dialect of English used formations like
this: "guiltless persons is condemned," and so do our people. And
finally, in times past, participial forms like these abounded: has
beat, has bore with it, has chose. Preterite forms were as varied:
blowed, growed, catched, and for climbed you can find clum, clome,
clim! all of which are locally used.

Pronunciation of many words has changed considerably, too.
Deef for deaf, heered for heard,
afeared for afraid, cowcumber for
cucumber, bammy for balmy, holp for
helped, are a very few. Several distinct characteristics of
the language of Elizabeth's day are still preserved. Words that had
oi in them were given a long i pronunciation:
pizen, jine, bile, pint, and so on.
Words with er were frequently pronounced as if the letters
were ar: sarvice, sartin, narvous. It
is from this time that we get our pronunciation of sergeant
and the word varsity which is a clipping of the word
university given the ar sound. Another Elizabethan
characteristic was the substitution of an i sound for an
e sound. You hear this tendency today when people say
miny kittle, Chist, git, and so on. It has
caused such confusion with the words pen and pin
(which our people pronounce alike as pin) that they are
regularly accompanied by a qualifying word - stick pin for
the pin and pin and ink pin for the pen.

You can hear many characteristic Scottish pronunciations.
Whar, thar, dar (where, there,
and dare) are typical. So also are poosh,
boosh, eetch, deesh, (push,
bush, itch, dish and fish.)

In some ways this vintage English reflects the outlook and
spirit of the people who speak it; and, we find that not only is
the language Elizabethan, but that some of the ways these people
look at things are Elizabethan too. Many other superstitions still
exist here. In some homes, when a death occurs all the mirrors and
pictures are turned to the wall. Now I don't know if today the
people still know why they do this, or if they just go through the
actions because it's the thing to do, but this belief goes far back
in history. It was once thought that the mirror reflected the soul
of the person looking into it and if the soul of the dead person
saw the soul of one of his beloved relatives reflected in the
mirror, he might take it with him, so his relatives were taking no
chances.

The belief that if a bird accidentally flies into a house, a
member of the household will die, is also very old, and is still
current in the region. Cedar trees are in a good deal of disfavor
in Lincoln County, and the reason seems to stem from the conviction
held by a number of people that if someone plants a cedar he will
die when it grows large enough to shade his coffin.

Aside from its antiquity, the most outstanding feature of the
dialect is its masculine flavor - robust and virile. This is a
language spoken by a red-blooded people who have colorful
phraseology born in their bones. They tend to call a spade a spade
in no uncertain terms. "No, the baby didn't come early, the weddin'
came late," remarked one proud grandpa. Such people have small
patience with the pallid descriptive limitations of standard
English. They are not about to be put off with the rather insipid
remark, "My, it's hot!" or, "isn't it cold out today?" They want to
know just how hot or cold: "It's hotter 'n the hinges of hell" or
"Hit's blue cold out thar!" Other common descriptive phrases for
cold are (freely) translated) "It's colder 'n a witch's bosom" or
it's colder 'n a well-digger's backside."

Speakers of Southern mountain dialect are past masters of the
art of coining vivid descriptions. Their everyday conversation is
liberally sprinkled with such gems as: "That man is so contrary, if
you throwed him in a river he'd float upstream!" "She walks so slow
they have to set stakes to see if she's a-movin!" "Thet pore boy's
an awkward size - too big for a man and not big enough for a
horse." "Zeke, he come bustin' outta thar and hit it for the road
quick as double-geared lightenin!"

Nudity is frowned upon in Appalachia, but for some reason there
are numerous "nekkid as. ." phrases. Any casual sampling would
probably contain these three: "Nekkid as a jaybird," "bare-nekkid
as a hound dog's rump," and "start nekkid." Start-nekkid comes
directly from the Anglo-Saxons, so it's been around for more than a
thousand years. Originally "Start" was steort which meant
"tail." Hence, if you were "start-nekkid," you were "nekkid to the
tail." A similar phrase, "stark-naked" is a Johnny-come-lately, not
even appearing in print until around 1530.

If a lady tends to be gossipy, her friends may say that "her
tongue's a mile long," or else that it "wags at both ends." Such
ladies are a great trial to young dating couples. Incidentally,
there is a formal terminology to indicate exactly how serious the
intentions of these couples are, ranging from sparking which
is simply dating, to courting which is dating with a more
serious intent, on up to talking, which means the couple is
seriously contemplating matrimony. Shakespeare uses talking
in this sense in King Lear.

If a man has imbibed too much of who-shot-John, his neighbor may
describe him as "so drunk he couldn't hit the ground with his hat,"
or, on the morning-after, the sufferer may admit that "I was so
dang dizzy I had to hold on to the grass afore I could lean ag'in
the ground."

One farmer was having a lot of trouble with a weasel killing his
chickens. "He jest grabs 'em before they can git word to God," he
complained.

Someone who has a disheveled or bedraggled appearance may be
described in any one of several ways: "You look like you've been
chewed up and spit out," or "you look like you've been a-sortin
wildcats," or "you look like the hindquarters of hard luck," or,
simply, "you look like somethin the cat drug in that the dog
wouldn't eat!"

"My belly thinks my throat is cut" means "I'm hungry," and seems
to have a venerable history of several hundred years. I found a
citation for it dated in the early 1500's.

A man may be "bad to drink" or "wicked to swear", but these
descriptive adjectives are never reversed.

You ought not to be shocked if you hear a saintly looking
grandmother admit she likes to hear a coarse-talking man; she means
a man with a deep bass voice, (this can also refer to a singing
voice, and in this case, if grandma prefers a tenor, she'd talk
about someone who sings "Shallow.") Nor ought you to leap to the
conclusion that a "Hard girl" is one who lacks the finer feminine
sensibilities. "Hard" is the dialectal pronunciation of
hired and seems to stem from the same source as do "far"
engines that run on rubber "tars."

This language is vivid and virile, but so was Elizabethan
English. However, some of the things you say may be shocking the
folk as much as their combined lexicons may be shocking you. For
instance, in the stratum of society in which I was raised, it was
considered acceptable for a lady to say either "damn" or "hell" if
strongly moved. Most Appalachian ladies would rather be caught dead
than uttering either of these words, but they are pretty free with
their use of a four letter word for manure which I don't use. I
have heard it described as everything from bug _____ to bull
______. Some families employ another of these four letter words for
manure as a pet name for the children, and seem to have no idea
that it is considered indelicate in other areas of the country.

Along with a propensity for calling a spade a spade, the dialect
has a strange mid-victorian streak in it too. Until recently, it
was considered brash to use either the word bull or
stallion. If it was necessary to refer to a bull, he was
known variously as a "father cow" or a "gentleman cow" or an "ox"
or a "mas-cu-line," while a stallion was either a "stable horse" or
else rather ominously, "The animal."

Only waspers fly around Lincoln County, I don't think
I've ever heard of a wasp there, and I've never been able to
trace the reason for that usage, but I do know why
cockleburrs are called cuckleburrs. The first part of the
word cockleburr carries an objectionable connotation to the folk.
However, if they are going to balk at that, it seems rather
hilarious to me that they find nothing objectionable about
cuckle.

A friend of mine who has a beauty parlor now, used to have a
small store on the banks of the Guyan River. She told me about a
little old lady who trotted into the store one day with a request
for "some of the strumpet candy." My friend said she was
very sorry, they didn't have any. But, she added gamely, what kind
was it, and she would try to order some. The little lady glanced
around to see if she could be overheard, lowered her voice and
said, "well, it's horehound, but I don't like to use that
word!"

The dialect today is a watered down thing compared to what it
was a generation ago, but our people are still the best talkers in
the world, and I think we should listen to them with more
appreciation.

Notes

1. Thomas Pyles, The Origins and Development of the English
Language. (New York; Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1964),
36. "It is not surprising that those lowland Scotsmen who colonized
the 'King's Plantation' in Ulster and whose descendents crossed the
Atlantic and settled the Blue Ridge, the Appalachians, and the
Ozarks should have been so little affected by the classical culture
of the Renaissance."

2. Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language,
2nd ed., (New York, 1957), 409.

3. H. L. Mencken, The American Language, ed. Raven I.
McDavid, Jr., the 4th ed. and the two supplements abridged, with
annotations and new material. (New York, 1963), 455.